Brief Story Line
Conan (Minami Takayama), Hattori Heiji (Ryo Horikawa) and Detective Kogoro (Rikiya Koyama) together with the police were guarding a couple of swords owned by Takuzo Onoe (Hiroshi Naka) which were targeted by Kaito Kid (Kappei Yamaguchi). The place was located in Hakodate, Hokkaido where Heiji was supposed to join Kendo tournament. Kazuha (Yuko Miyamura) who was Heiji's love interest also went to Hakodate to give him support, together with Ran (Wakana Yamazaki).
Meanwhile, a murdered body was later found with a unique shape of wounds. Conan and Heiji were suspicious that it might have something to do with Kaito and the swords. Things got complicated with the appearance of dangerous weapons dealer Brian Kadokura (Banjo Ginga) who seemingly also targeting the swords.
So what was the actual importance of the swords that made various parties target them? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Like all previous Detective Conan movies that were released in cinemas, this one also had the same rush feeling when we watched it. However, my wife and I felt that this film was a lot faster than before, so much so that we had a hard time in catching up with the whole plot. Somehow I felt that there were too many stories tried to put inside here. Even my wife felt a bit dizzy trying to grasp all of them. On the one side, we got Kaito Kid who was trying to do his usual heist, then on another side we got Heiji who had very specific reason for getting Kid (a funny one I might add, though both of us were not aware as likely it happened in one of the episodes before). And obviously Conan who tried to solve the murder case and find out the motive and swords' importance.
And not only those issues, but there were also the side stories involving other people that was hard to keep up. We got additional characters like Detective Kawazoe (Yo Oizumi), medical student Hijiri Fukushiro (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka), his father Ryoe Fukushiro (Takayuki Sugo), plus others from the series like Momiji Ooka (Satsuki Yukino) who had huge crush on Heiji and several others. Perhaps this would be better suited as a two-part movie to slow things down so we could enjoy it better. Anyway, that's never going to happen since it's a habit to release one movie with one major case every year. Btw, this is the 27th installment ever since its first release back in 1997. For me personally, this one felt a bit too heavy and challenging to properly enjoy. So I could understand the boredom of certain audience and also the very young children who saw this with their parents. Most likely this would be better enjoyed by hard core fans who had followed the manga and anime series closely.
The mystery this time was not the closed room murder case but more like a treasure hunt kind where they tried to find clues. The action was surprisingly not so much compared to recent films, although they were still pretty entertaining and had a quite spectacular finale. The humor was still apparent usually involving Kogoro and the Conan's kindergarten friends who appeared very briefly here but still managed to provide some laughs. The central of attention of the movie was more on Heiji (also his love interest Kazuha). It was a bit weird for me cause the preceding film was Detective Conan vs Kid the Phantom Thief that focused more on Kaito Kid and his encounter with Conan, rather than Heiji himself.
The one thing that was truly memorable for me and my wife of the movie was the lovely depiction of Hakodate. Although both of us had experienced Hokkaido before, but we never went to Hakodate. It's said that after the film's release, there was a jump of tourism to the city. With so many point of attraction there, it made us interested in going to see for ourselves. The movie had a duration of 110 minutes including closing credits that showed the lovely sceneries, plus quite important post end credit scenes that were pretty surprising and a brief hint of the next movie in 2025.
Overall this was another quite entertaining Detective Conan movie which was a huge success and became the highest grossing film in the series as of now. My wife and I enjoyed the action and we also liked the humor that never got old. However, among the more recent films, I thought this was a bit heavy to truly enjoy with so many stories to fit into one and to be honest, too little screen time for Detective Conan. So if you want to see the solving of a very complex mystery and a lot of Conan doing the deduction plus the amazing fight between Conan vs Kaito Kid, then you won't exactly find them here as it's more of Heiji vs Kaito Kid with Conan felt more like tagging along. But if you are major fans of Conan who would jump at any chance to see him in the cinema, then you definitely would not want to miss this.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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